Sometimes your computer freezes. Symptoms may include your mouse pointer refusing to move or the program stopping in the middle of saving a document or performing some other task. When this happens you cannot close the document or open another one or do anything else on your computer.

At such times, the best remedy is to “force quit” the program and open the document again. If you have not saved recently, you will lose all the unsaved material, but there is really nothing else you can do.

Force Quit/Windows PC
Simultaneously hold down the Control, Alt and Delete keys (CTRL+ALT+ DELETE). The Windows Task Manager dialog box opens. The Applications tab is selected and the Task pane shows a list of all the programs that you have open and whether they are running or not responding.

Click to select the program that is not responding and click the End Task button on the bottom of the dialog box. Sometimes this must be done more than once.

The program closes and, if you are using Windows XP, a message box will appear asking if you wish to send an Error Report. You may click Yes or No to send or not send a report of the computer problem to Microsoft.